The Mystery of the Cloth

How big was Jesus Christ? Was He a strongly built man 5 feet 10 inches tall, with long, delicate hands & feet, a right shoulder slightly lower than the left? Did He have a brain weighing approximately 1,492 grams? These questions were debated for three days last week by 200 learned scientists and black-robed scholars of the Roman Catholic Church in the huge, frescoed Hall of the Papal Chancellery in Rome. It was the first International Congress of Studies of the Holy Shroud.

During the 7th Century two early churchmen, Saints Braulionis and Adamnan of lona, referred to the existence of a cloth venerated as the shroud in which the body of Christ was wrapped when it was laid in the tomb. In 1171 William, Archbishop of Tyre, mentioned such a shroud in Constantinople. In 1204 a member of the Fourth Crusade, which sacked the city, sent the shroud to his father in France. But in 1349 the Church of St. Stephen in Besanc,on, where it was kept, caught fire, and the shroud seemed to have vanished.

The following year, King Philippe de Valois of France presented to one of his lords a cloth purporting to be the same shroud. Two bishops forbade veneration of it, presumably because it was a fraud; and in 1390 Pope Clement VII issued a special bull ordering that it should be treated only as "a painted representation of the original, authentic Holy Shroud, whose whereabouts are unknown." Since 1452 the cloth has been the property of the Italian House of Savoy. On special occasions it was exhibited to the faithful, but in the 19th Century, at least, it seems to have appeared not as a painting but as a soiled and damaged piece of white linen.

65 & 90 Degrees. In 1898, Italy's King Umberto I agreed to have the relic photographed. Secondo Pia, a photographer of Turin, was given the job. While developing the plate, he reported: "Suddenly I was so filled with fear that I almost fainted. For there grew plainly visible on the plate the face and body of a man whose head was covered with blood, whose wrists carried stigmata, whose expression was one of untold majesty."

Ever since, the argument has raged: Does the 14 ft. 3 in.-long cloth really bear the front & back imprint of Christ's naked body, as though it had enveloped Him lengthwise, or is it the work of a clever forger? Points mentioned in favor of the shroud's authenticity:

P:The figure on the shroud is like a photographic negative (light areas appear dark), which would seem to indicate that it is the result of an impression rather than a painting (though an impression might still be a forgery). According to a letter read at the Congress by Roman Catholic Professor Rudolf Kynek of Czechoslovakia, "We have treated corpses with myrrh and aloes, and when we placed them in linen an impression of the corpse could afterwards be plainly seen on the linen when we exposed it to light. As time went by ... when humidity covered it with invisible fine molds it became invisible to the naked eye . . ."

P:Medieval tradition held that nails were driven through Christ's palms. The shroud shows wounds near the middle of the wrists. After hammering nails in 35 freshly amputated hands, Surgeon Pierre Barbet of Paris declared that the palms would tear too easily to support the weight of a man, and Christ's wrists must indeed have been pierced. Believers in the shroud's authenticity doubt that this fact would be known to anyone forging the relic.

P: The marks of the scourge on the back of "the man of the shroud" seem to make the same pattern that would have been made by Roman scourges of the time -- a pattern unlikely to be known to a faker.

P:Germany's Dr. Herman Moedder of Cologne's St. Francis Hospital found by a series of experimental "crucifixions," with eight volunteers, that a person bound to a cross by his hands must periodically writhe upward on the crossbar in order to breathe. The shroud's pattern shows trickles of blood from the wrists at angles of both 65 and go degrees -- a fact which could be explained by such writhing, but which a forger would be unlikely to allow for.

Private Property. On the negative side are other cogent arguments:

P:Pope Clement VII and the 14th Century bishops must have had good reason for positively declaring that the shroud was not authentic.

P:Luke and John refer to the wrappings of Jesus' body in the plural ("linen cloths").

P:According to the Gospel of John, the body of Jesus was wrapped together with "a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight," and though the shroud shows traces of aloes and myrrh, some experts think that 100 Ibs. would have left more of a residue.

Last week's conference closed without final proof either way, but with an official hope "that a way may be found to examine scientifically, religiously and historically those aspects of the holy linen which may lead to determination of its authenticity." Colored photographs, X-ray and chemical analyses seemed indicated, but much red tape needed unraveling before they would be forthcoming. The shroud, still the private property of ex-King Umberto II, has not been exhibited since the Holy Year 1933.

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